NICT and NSF Announce Partnership in New-Generation Networking

May 30, 2013

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the U.S. concluded a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), facilitating a partnership in the areas of networking technology and the systems for future Internet/new-generation networks.

Whereas the current Internet is transforming the global economy and improving the lives of people around the world, it is becoming widely recognized that a new architecture has to be constructed for more robust and evolvable future networks. With this recognition, the Third Director General-level meeting of the US-Japan Policy Cooperation Dialogue on the Internet Economy held in Tokyo, Japan, on March 23, 2012, asserted a necessity to conduct joint research and development in order to promote the research and development of the New Generation Network (NWGN) / Future Internet.

To follow up to this assertion, Japanese and U.S. researchers gathered in Tokyo to discuss topics of mutual interests for future funding, and three topics emerged: (1) optical networking, (2) mobile computing, and (3) network design and modeling.

To support these three areas of mutual interests, NICT and NSF started close collaborations, and concluded a MOU was necessary to establish a formal working relationship. NICT’s Vice President, Makoto Imase and NSF’s Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, Farnam Jahanian signed the MOU.

NICT and NSF’s Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS) have a history of collaboration that extends over several years. NICT has tracked the NSF-funded Global Environment for Networking Innovation (GENI) project since its inception in 2007, and in 2010 the two agencies jointly funded a set of U.S./Japan proposals in the area of future Internet design. These projects helped establish new collaborations among researchers from both countries. This time, the MOU will enable NICT and NSF to work together on joint funding opportunities enabling collaborations among U.S. and Japanese researchers in the areas of networking technology and the systems for future Internet/new-generation networks.

Picture taken after the signing ceremony.

Right : Dr. Makoto Imase(Vice President of NICT)
Left : Dr. Farnam Jahanian (Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering of NSF)